Planning and Pre Production
On this page, I will be showing the processes involved with planning my project.
This will be including my GANTT chart which I will be using to track my progress, The Mindmap I had created for brainstorming ideas, Moodboards for understanding the visuals, concept art for defining the overall appearance and any additional information that I will be including as I move forward in this project.
GANTT Chart
Before I begin working on the production of my project, first I must create a Gantt chart to track what areas of development are needing to be worked on by creating deadlines for the various areas.
The first week of this project involves brainstorming ideas, creating a S.W.O.T analysis, producing a pitch to be used, Moodboard creation and any additional setup required such as creating this very site!
The second week will involve presenting a finalised pitch to an audience, creating a story-driven narrative for my project, breaking down the narrative into a usable level and finally starting to create the concept art for this project.
MindMap
In line with the Gantt chart that I will be using for this project, I have also created a Mindmap as a way to formulate my ideas and build the overall structure of my proposed level. With the use of a Mindmap, I was able to easily and efficiently draft out any and all ideas for my project ranging from the small details such as ammo and any pickups to the type of camera that I wish to use.
Additionally, I used this as an opportunity to branch out any ideas that might have multiple outcomes, for example, the level choice and its narrative i.e. an underground vault possibly being part of the final narrative.
MoodBoards
When creating the mood boards for his unit, I had to take into consideration what styles and themes I wish to implement for when I start creating the concept art for my project and before moving into the production part of this assignment.
As you can see from the gallery below, much of the influences towards my project consisted of sci-fi imagery with the use of spaceships, sharp angles, bold colours and cold interiors. I have also created a mood board for my character design and any possible texture ideas that I might synthesize into my final level design.
Storyboards
Before I began to develop further in this project I had created a storyboard to show the introduction to the level that the player would be experiencing. This would be setting the stage by telling the player a backstory of the character and world that they would be engaging in, I chose to go with a narrative approach with this project as I wanted to produce a level with purpose and story so that the player can involve themselves into to the game.
Here are the panels created for this.
Script
I wrote up a script containing the intro sequence to my level consisting of the initial conversation between the protagonist and the ship's AI computer. I added directional markers as the where the player should be when triggering the desired dialogue, additionally integrating the start of the tutorial with this. As I did not want to spend too much time on this I decided not to continue the tutorial after the player has entered the combat room as I will be required to implement a form of combat into this project of which I have a limited timeframe. This script also was used as a reference when choosing assets to implement when needed.
Concepts
During the pre-production element of this project, I started to produce concepts of the various elements of my ideas created in my mindmap. Such as a main menu concept, level design concepts and any other potential concepts that I may use further on in development.
First is my concept for the main menu that I will be using for my project.
My choice in this design concept is similar to those found in games such as Half-Life 2 and LA Noire by using an animated menu to engage the player from start to finish during their experience.
I.ytimg.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pWsLyU9uu-M/maxresdefault.jpg [Accessed 24 Apr. 2019].
Steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net. (2019). [online] Available at: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/943937754993607103/B96283C89D8757B8DCDEBE41D956032C82320885/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2019].
Character Design
When creating the character for my level, I already had an idea of what kind of person I wanted them to be as I had created and laid out any possible ideas during the mindmap and mood board creation period. This led me to create a character reference board for use during the concept art creation segment of this unit, as then I can use this to produce an accurate visual representation of the character I wish to present in my final project.
Additionally, finding items of clothing which reflect the characters personality, the genre and time period of my project pitch as the character is an important part of my project both as a player character and as a narrative device.
Character Design continued...
By referring to the board above I was able to design a character for this project.
Although before I started to design my character, first I had to start by sketching out a body for the character and as I have little to no experience with drawing human anatomy. I tried first by sketching out a body freehand on paper then replicating the same body again on the other side of the page as I could use the first sketch as a reference of scale when drawing the characters clothes, as you can see in the image to the left below.
Afterwards, I reviewed this process with my peers who liked the design but wanted to see more angles of the character so suggested I use a stencil with the use of a lightbox. I used this to create a more accurate representation of my character with more details, features of the characters design which assisted my progress further in development.
Level Concepts
Before producing the interior concepts for my project I first created a couple of thumbnail sketches to get a broader scope of what style I wanted my spaceship to be, ranging from a sleek ship with a mechanical arm or a more traditional freighter style of spaceship with a few other designs as possible vehicles to be used in game. After which I had decided on using the cargo ship design as I wanted my interior to be of an industrial nature filled with broken parts and various pipes and machinery.
With the design of the spaceship decided upon, I moved on to creating the level blueprint to base my level off of. In this sketch, I made the level span across three levels as I wanted the player to navigate a large ship and not just a small portion of it. The first floor is to be where the player will spawn in with the second level being a training area for the player to learn other game mechanics such as combat with robotic NPC's and the final floor is where a small ship or vehicle would be located for terrestrial expeditions.
Interior Concepts / Prototypes
Just before entering production on my project, I had designed and conceptualized the basis of a singular futuristic environment using a scale model of the Unreal Engine mannequin (named Steve). This enabled me to create assets that were scaled in uniform with the Unreal Engine and to start to visualise the original concept I had envisioned.
First Concept
This second image is a further development of my project before being imported into the Unreal Engine, I focused more on texture mapping during this phase as more assets came closer to completion ensuring that my UV maps were aligned correctly as not to appear broken in the game engine. Additionally, by adding emissive lighting to some of the assets as there will be no directional nor skylight in the final environment.
Second Concept
This final image is the first prototype of my level design in the Unreal Engine which is based on my initial sketch as shown above. I took this time to playtest my layout in the engine and to also start on animating the doors in my level. During this time I had discovered an issue with the player's mouse interfering with the environment in an unsuitable way, which would affect the gameplay negatively after which I had decided to move over to a third person perspective.
Prototype
Required Assets
Wall variations
-With Pipes
-Without Pipes
-Electricals
-Corners
-Emissive Lights
-Diagonal
Door variations
-Locked
-Unlocked
-Broken
-Audio
Floor Tile variations
-Corner
-Regular
Window variations
-Clean
-Broken
-Double
Stair variations
-Left
-Right
Character
-Mesh
-Outfit
-Audio
Objects
-Boxes
-Cables
-Keycard
-Clutter
